


HARDER FASTER LOUDER BABY

by freudensteins_monster



Series: MCU Crossovers/Ideas [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain Marvel (2019), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Based on a Tumblr Post, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, F/M, Former Popstars AU, Gen, Girl Band, Gratuitous Marvel All-Female Team mentions, Originally Posted on Tumblr, for reasons financially important to the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 07:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18912412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freudensteins_monster/pseuds/freudensteins_monster
Summary: Wanda was a teenage popstar. Teenage Darcy was a huge fan of her girl group, the Poptarts. Apparently life as a teenage popstar wasn't as glamorous as the music videos made it seem, and twelve years later Wanda's still hasn't quite recovered. She's also about to get Darcy as a sister-in-law, and the only thing she wants for her engagement party is for her favourite girl group to reunite and perform.





	HARDER FASTER LOUDER BABY

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a post by a rock band au photoset posted by romanoff-danvers. This ficlet/fic idea was originally tacked on to a reblog of that post:   
> https://freudensteins-monster.tumblr.com/post/185037004931/where-is-this-au-i-need-it-my-soul-literally
> 
> Title inspired by Captain Marvel tagline + a line from Prey for Rock and Roll, "Dude, you guys are so good. But you know what, you would be really good, if all of your songs were faster and louder."

For her 14th birthday, Darcy Lewis’s father got her a VIP pass to see her favourite girl group “The Poptarts” in their first (and only) concert. She was seated in the front row next to a really cute 15yr old boy, Pietro, who said he was at the concert because of his sister (who was nowhere in sight). It wasn’t until six years later, after they’d bumped into each other at college and started dating, that Darcy learned that what he’d really meant was “my sister’s in the band”.

When she first meets Wanda (who Darcy had known by her stage name Wendy Marshall, thanks to the antisemitic a-holes at their label, Hydra Industries), it takes Darcy all of a minute to get over her 90’s baby nostalgia and hug the living crap out of her; she just looked so god damn sad.

Over the years Darcy has never managed to get the whole story from Wanda or Pietro, but from the occasional vague references the pair make to Wanda’s time as a teenage popstar Darcy’s pretty confident it wasn’t as fun as the music videos made it seem.

Fast-forward another six years and Pietro and Darcy are getting married.

 

Pietro, a one-time Olympic hopeful, is now coaching the next generation of track stars at a fancy athletics institute while Darcy is working in the PR department of Stark Industries, and Wanda… Wanda is now managing the same café she worked at when she was in college, still trying to pay off the loans she took out to get a Fine Arts degree. She still loves music, albeit quietly. She can always be heard humming along to whatever’s playing on the store speakers and never goes anywhere without her headphones. Only Pietro and Darcy know about her secret youtube channel where she posts videos of herself playing acoustic covers, her face always hidden. They know she’s a thousand times more talented than she was at 15 and keep trying to convince her to perform in public again, but Wanda can never quite get up the nerve to really put herself out there.

Wanda is one of Darcy’s closest friends, as well as her maid of honor and future sister-in-law, but Darcy sometimes thinks she might be Wanda’s only friend, and it just kills Darcy to see her so adrift in the world. And so Darcy has an idea, and the way she explains it to Pietro later that night goes something like this: Wanda needs more friends who will love and support her and encourage her to get back up on stage again >> despite the vague negativity around the experience itself, Wanda always spoke of her fellow Poptarts fondly >> THE POPTARTS SHOULD REUNITE! >> Wanda rekindles old friendships and rediscovers a love of performing. BAM!

“It’s foolproof!” she decreed excitedly.

Her fiancé was not convinced. “Whatever you say, zajček,” he sighed, turning off the light for the third time. “Just let me sleep.”

Convincing Wanda was also more difficult that Darcy had anticipated.

“My English must be rusty; your words make no sense to me,” Wanda frowned into her coffee at brunch that Sunday.

Darcy leveled her best unimpressed glare at her future sister-in-law. “Your English is fine: I want the Poptarts to perform at my engagement party. It’s the only thing I want.”

“Darcy…”

“Please?” she begged. “It’d mean so much to me. If it wasn’t for the Poptarts I wouldn’t have recognised Pietro when he hit on me at that frat party. I would written him off as some sleazy, wasted exchange student and turned him down hard. If it wasn’t for you and the Poptarts I wouldn’t be getting married to the love of my life. Please? Pleasepleaseplease?”

“Darcy, I’m not even in contact with them anymore,” Wanda argued weakly, unable to flat-out refuse in the face of Darcy’s impressive puppy eyes (even Pietro had yet to work up an immunity to them). “I haven’t spoken to them in almost ten years. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“What if I could find them?” Darcy eagerly volunteered.

“If you can find them and get them to agree to this ridiculousness then we can talk about it some more. Until then,” she sighed, throwing a few notes on the table. “I’ve got to get to work.”

With each step Wanda became less concerned about Darcy’s crazy request, and by the time she got to the café she all but believed it to be impossible. Darcy refused to think so, even after she failed find any social media accounts for Wanda’s fellow Poptarts, but she did activate her “Overkill Protocol” and enlisted the help of biological father, her boss’s boss’s boss, Tony Stark.

Darcy’s odd request barely earned a raised eyebrow from the genius billionaire philanthropist, who promptly threw his considerable resources at the problem and had the remaining Poptarts locations confirmed by dinner time.

 

Val Nilsen is the oldest of the four; then newly 18, now a jaded 30. Tony finds her propping up the bar in a dive just outside New Orleans, technically working. She drinks a little too much, even for a reformed playboy like Tony, and throws punches a little too quickly, as his representative found out when he presented her with Darcy’s request. But once he came to and assured Val that the request was serious, and she saw the upfront payment already sitting in her bank account, she agreed to make the trip to New York in a month’s time, even if the only singing she does these days is on karaoke nights when the prize money is worth staying sober(ish) for.

He finds Carol Danvers, now 28, working as a songwriter in LA. She’s stuck in the contract from hell, churning out songs for Starforce Records with zero credit and even less creative freedom. She has no interest in reliving her fifteen minutes of fame but the amount of zeros in that upfront payment, and knowing that the full payment could buy her way out of her contract and then some, is enough for her to consider it.

Natasha Romanoff, 29, was both the hardest to track down and the easiest to find. Originally known by the stage name Natalie Rushman, she emancipated herself from her overbearing momager at 16, a few weeks after their Poptarts contract crumbled, and disappeared off the face of the earth. She re-appeared two years later, having reinvented herself as Natalia Roman, and had been living just across the bridge in Bed-Stuy, working as a session singer/musician, ever since. Though she didn’t get violent, she was the most indignant about being having her past come back to haunt her. She considered disappearing again after Tony’s man barged into her recording session, but ultimately the thought of seeing the other girls again (and ok, yes, the money too) made her stick around.

(Tony didn’t forget Wanda. The upfront payment he’d offered the others pretty much paid off the last of her student loans, and he’d set aside the rest to gift to her on Darcy’s wedding day, a sort of “welcome to the family” present.)

 

A week before the engagement party the Poptarts arrive at one of Tony’s many investment properties (a six bedroom penthouse apartment overlooking the frigging park), their home away from home for the next week, “Or month, or whatever,” as Tony generously put it.

Their first couple of days back together are awkward; they tiptoe around each other and make stilted conversation. But on the third night, when Darcy arrives with dinner to act as a buffer, and event coordinator, and to ask a thousand and one questions, the conversation starts moving a little more smoothly. After dinner, as they make a dent in the well-stocked bar and fight over the aux cable and available instruments, their thoughts go from dusting off their old songs, which – sorry, Darcy – they have no love for, to making new songs.

There’s a lot of repressed anger between them (or not-so-repressed, in Val’s case) and all the riffs and lyrics they jot down in the apartment’s recording studio (because of course it has a frigging recording studio) veer heavily into punk rock territory. By midnight they have the rough outline for a song tentatively titled “I’ll Snap Your Fucking Neck”, and as the sun comes up over Central Park they’re sprawled across the living room furniture still trying to decide what to call their re-formed band.

“The Valkyries.”

“No!” comes the empathic group response as it’s about the third time in the last 20 minutes that Val’s brought it up.

“Starjammers,” is Carol’s latest suggestion, which Nat quickly vetos.

“Too David Bowie.”

“Doom Maidens,” Val hiccups.

“Too death metal,” Wanda cringes, gesturing wildly at Darcy until she makes the blinds go down over the large window.

Nat puts forward “Avengers” and Val counters with “Revengers”.

“Queen’s Revenge?” Darcy muses drowsily as the song in the background changes to “Somebody to Love”. She’s asleep before she can hear anyone reject her idea.

Silence falls as the rest of Wanda’s friends and bandmates drift off to sleep the smooth vocals of Freddie Mercury. She smiles and says to the room, “I think I’ve got it.”

 

A few days later, dressed in their best 90’s glam-grunge (Darcy had insisted on a “fun” theme), the four women take their places on the stage of the club Tony Stark had rented for the night (or maybe he just owned it, who knows). Val’s on lead vocals until she can pick up enough keyboard or guitar, Nat’s on drums, because she can play just about anything it turns out, and Carol’s on bass guitar while Wanda’s on lead. It’s a lot different to her well-worn acoustic but for the first time in a long time she feels confident and excited.

“Hello New York!” Val calls as she struts up to the mike. “We are here at the request of the lovely bride-to-be, because she was our biggest fan back in the day, back when we were known as the Poptarts.” A murmur of acknowledgment rolls over the crowd along with a few excited woo’s from Darcy’s college friends. “And since she’s marrying into the family, we could hardly say no,” she adds, gesturing at Wanda. Darcy and Pietro cheer obnoxiously until Wanda cracks and blushes bright red. “But it’s been twelve long years. We’re not the same girls we used to be, and we sure as hell aren’t the Poptarts anymore,” she sneers. “We stand before you tonight, “A Force To Be Reckoned With”, but you can call us “A-Force” for short,” Val honest-to-god giggles as Darcy’s infectious excitement spreads through the crowd. “Okay, let’s get this party started - Congratulations Darcy and Pietro! You might remember this one, it’s called “I’m Super Into You!”

Nat raises her drumsticks above her head and counts them in.

**_“ONE! TWO! ONE TWO THREE FOUR!!”_ **

 

**Author's Note:**

> Darcy and Pietro beg the band to perform at their wedding reception and they all readily agree. On the day, after their first set, Darcy’s bio-dad’s girlfriend introduces them to their future manager, Hope Van Dyne, a scarily competent woman with a haircut so sharp you could bleed just looking at it. ...Nat’s kinda dying to copy it.


End file.
